Hineni. (Hebrew. Here I am.)
Space: 511 Gallery
My mixed media paintings and drawings constitute a kind of self-portraiture, employing animal imagery, the human figure, and ritual symbols and objects to convey a feminist visual autobiography. I cull elements from my dream life, meditation practice, personal unconscious, and cultural background to create an esoteric interplay of characters in a variety of media. Animal imagery functions on several levels in my work. The individuals are avatars —manifestation of an embodied deity, or the expression of a person, an emotion, or an idea. They are presented close to one another and to the human characters in an intimate fashion as the friend, the familiar, or the lover. I also suggest an intrinsic interrelationship with animals in my work, free from customary hierarchies, suggesting our shared sentience, origin, and fate. This element of my work is a deeply personal response to the reality of the climate crisis, global deforestation, and species extinction. In my practice, I am continually investigating esoteric movement-based plays of power, the erotic, and sensuality. I use strong, layered mark making, active brush work and vivid colors to underscore motion as a central concern of my work, while combining abstraction and figuration. The characters in my paintings often have extended limbs or faces turning one toward another or gesturing upward, as they might do toward an experience or an expression of the Ineffable | the Creator (“Shem ha-Mephorash” in Hebrew – meaning “the explicit name”, or the name which cannot be spoken). The notion of vertical ascension (“aliyah” to rise in a spiritual sense) to obtain a more intimate relationship with the divine (and in their intrinsic essence, with other sentient beings) is deeply embedded in my work."
